West Africa Academy of Science, LASU to Hold International Confab on Tinubunomics

The West Africa Academy of Science is collaborating with the Political Science Department of the Lagos State University (LASU) to facilitate an international conference on President Bola Tinubu’s economics.

With the theme, ‘Tinubunomics, an Ideological Perspective and its Philosophical Components’, said to be premised on an interrogation of a work, ‘Financialism: Water from an Empty Well’, authored by the president himself and Hon. Brian Browne, a former Consul General of the United States in Nigeria, the conference will hold at the LASU Conference Hall, with a plenary session from 10:00am on March 25, and paper presentations on March 26, 2026.

In a joint statement, the Executive Secretary of the academy, Mr. Michael Igaga; the Chairman of the organising committee, Professor Odion Akhaine; and Head of the Department of Political Science, LASU, Dr Abdul Wasi Tunde, said that the conference will celebrate the advancement of ideological thoughts, drawing from authentic African resonance, charging Africans to transcend borrowed ideas that are not intuited into the African cultural and metaphysical idioms.

They stated that the conference is being organised because countries of the West African sub-region have continued to rely on foreign perspectives on matters of development even as African academics are continuously calling for an Afro-centric ideological perspective, drawing heavily on Africa’s peculiarities, knowing that foreign ideological components that are not drawn from the integration of cultural and environmental peculiarities cannot effectively resolve the contradictions underlining Africa’s development trajectory.

According to them, in the work ‘Financialism: Water from an Empty Well’, President Tinubu and Brian Browne interrogated global development and gave significant attention to the Nigerian question, stating that the West Africa Academy of Science observes that since the exit of early post-independence rulers like Kwame Nkrumah, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Julius Nyerere, and Kenneth Kaunda, Africa has remained denied in subsequent years of philosopher kings in the realm of governance. 

“It is in this context that the emergence of Tinubu as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria post-May 29, 2023, has delivered a new narrative to governance in Nigeria and its development trajectory,” they said, adding that the academy has commissioned three writers to interrogate the ideological components of this work President Tinubu has co-authored with Brian Browne and published in a treatise.

The statement added that the conference will also draw academic attention to the ideology that underpins the Tinubu government’s excellent policy perspective as a leader of Nigeria, pointing out that from his government’s precedence so far, he is the first Nigerian president that can be called out on his own postulations on political economy, being that he has a perspective on the Nigerian question in his aforementioned 2013 published work before emerging as the nation’s  president 10 years after.

They said that the conference will deliver on Tinubu’s contributions to ideological thoughts, drawn from the publication, first presented in Chicago, United States and Nigeria in 2013.

According to the statement, the event will witness paper presentations by leading academics drawn from institutions of global repute, just as attendees at sessions will include students and youths, captains of Nigerian Industries, members of the Diplomatic Corp, technocrats and representatives of development organisations, among others.

The president is also expected on the opening day as the special guest of honour, while Professor Julius Ihonvbere, an academic of international standing acknowledged for his contributions to ideological studies and political economy, and the current Majority Leader of the House of Representative, will chair the session.